Emily Prentiss, Mom?
by spnfandom8
Summary: "Caring does suck. But you can't stop yourself from caring about people, and you shouldn't. It hurts, and it sucks, and sometimes I wish I didn't care about anyone, especially, your dumbass father, but then I think about everything about you guys that makes me happy, and where would I be if I didn't love you guys?"


One-Shot

**AN Enjoy. :) **

"Hey, do you know who that kid is?" Morgan asks me, waiting for me to pick my head up before be points.

"Um, yes. I'll be right back" I tell him, walking over to where he's standing, watching me.

"Damian?" I question, wondering what he's doing in my office.

"You were supposed to be at your apartment today" he says, everything about him seemingly closed off and un-open for discussion.

"Oh shit. I am so sorry Damian, it totally slipped my mind" I tell him, thinking of how exactly to get out of work early today.

"Of course it did" he mutters, making me frown, wondering why exactly he's acting so sullen over a forgotten meeting. He isn't usually like this.

"What's wrong Damian?" I ask, looking quickly over my shoulder to see most of my team 'discreetly' looking over at us, curious looks on their faces.

"Nothing" he says, hooking his thumbs into the straps of his backpack before he begins to walk away from me.

"Hey, where are you going?" I ask, jogging slightly to keep up with his recently longer legs.

"To get a cup of coffee, and then to wait for you to figure your things out so that we can leave" he says sharply as we pass my team, making my stride slow down, instead watching him walk to the break room, a heavy sigh falling from my lips.

"What's up Prentiss?" Morgan asks curiously as they all turn to watch him as well.

"Nothing, I just, I forgot that he was gonna be here today. He's mad at me, and I still have some paperwork to finish before Hotch will let me leave" I tell them, sitting back down at my desk chair, keeping a side-eye on him the whole time.

"Who, uh, who exactly is he?" JJ asks, perching on the edge of Morgan's desk as everyone else settles at their own desks, Garcia settling into the chair next to Morgan's desk.

"He's, jesus, I don't even know how to explain it. He's important to me, and I uh, I care about him, but some things have changed recently and he isn't taking any of it well." I tell them, not even attempting to explain the clusterfuck that had me leaving Gotham, or that I previously lived in Gotham.

Damian makes his way back towards me, ignoring everyone around us as he sits down at the chair next to my desk, a glare on his face as he quickly looks around the paper strewn around my desk before scoffing, slumping back into the chair as he pulls out his sketchpad and pencils.

"This shouldn't take more than an hour" I tell him as I pull open yet another file.

He doesn't answer me, instead choosing to flip to a blank page and angrily slashing lines across the page, lines that I know will turn into something beautiful, but for now, just look like the angry scribblings of a child.

The time ticks by slowly, fifteen, and then thirty minutes passing in relative quiet, except for the quiet chatter from JJ, Garcia, and Morgan, who are all finished with their paperwork, at least until something new pops up. The lull that has occurred is rare, and i'm glad for the slight break, even though i'm trying to fight my way through paperwork fast enough to spend the remainder of the day with Damian.

Hotch eventually comes down the stairs to talk about a previous case with Reid, catching Damian's attention for about a minute before he goes back to sketching.

"I don't know guys, I care about her, but I don't think it'll last" Morgan says, talking about his recent girlfriend, none of us think it'll last, but he likes her.

"You shouldn't care about anyone, it only gets you hurt" Damian says distractedly from where he sits, his face still buried as his hand moves fluidly across the page.

"What?" I ask, his statement having gained the attention of my entire team, surprised looks on all of their faces.

"What exactly are you questioning?" he asks, picking his head up to look at me, a defiant look on his face.

"Why you would say that" I tell him, my face showing my incredulity.

"Why wouldn't I? Take a look at everyone i've cared about, and then ask why exactly caring about them helped me." he says, turning back to his drawing.

"No, Damian, you don't get to say that and then try to ignore me. Explain to me what exactly you mean by that." I demand, not caring that my entire team is watching our back and forth, riveted.

"What did caring about anyone ever get me? Huh? I _cared _about you, and you left-" he says, prompting me to interrupt him.

"He told me to leave Damian, you _know_ that-" I begin, but then he interrupts me.

"He tells everyone to leave! You dated him for _three years_, you were _engaged. _You should know him better than that by now! You made me love you, you made me think you were going to stay. But you didn't, the two of you fucking idiots had a colossally _stupid _fight and he told you to leave, because he is always scared that someone is gonna hurt him, so he hurts them first. You can't just make people care about you then leave! You are a fucking profiler mom!" he yells, flinching back when the name slips out of his mouth, and I can tell from his clenching fists and ridgid posture that he's about to lose it. There isn't anything I can do though.

"FUCK! Not. Fair. Not. Fair. Not. Fair." he chants, slamming his fist into the closest wall over and over as angry tears begin to stream down his face.

I hold a hand up when Morgan moves forward to grab him, knowing that it will only end in my co-worker on the floor and a guilty Damian running.

I wait for his hand to stop smashing into the concrete wall before I move forward.

"Damian-"

"It's not fair, you said you were gonna stay. You made me love you and then you left. You said that you would still see us but you live four hours away and you are always working. I've seen you four times in the last eight months." he says, dropping his hand to his side as he turns to face me, his chest heaving and blood dripping from his hand onto the floor.

"God, I hate caring" he murmurs, dragging the sleeve of his shirt over his face before dragging his bloody hand through his hair, not even seeming to register the pain the movement should cause.

I reach up to wipe a stray tear from his face before I pull him down into a hug, my chest constricting when he tucks his head into my shoulder, wrapping his arms around me.

Damian was the hardest out of all of Bruce's kids for me to get to know, and it took four times as long for him to even like me, let alone love.

They all grew on me, like diseases, and he's right, caring does suck.

"Caring does suck. But you can't stop yourself from caring about people, and you shouldn't. It hurts, and it sucks, and sometimes I wish I didn't care about anyone, _especially,_ your dumbass father, but then I think about everything about you guys that makes me happy, and where would I be if I didn't love you guys?" I ask, running my hand through his hair a few times as he calms down before letting him go.

"I think I broke my hand" he says, holding it up in between us and twisting it side to side so that we can inspect the damage. I let him change the subject, knowing how he is about expressing his feelings.

"Yeah, I think your right. How about we get you to the hospital?" I ask, grabbing my bag and mouthing 'later' at my team as I put Damian's things back into his backpack, slinging it over my shoulder before I hook my arm through his and lead the way out of the building.

I end up taking the rest of the week off, Damian calls Bruce and asks if he could stay with me for the week, Bruce agrees.

We talk about how to make time so that I could see him and his brothers more often, and about how unhealthy it is to take out your anger on unsuspecting walls.

He finally tells me what's been on his mind the last eight months since I left, and I eat my trepidation about feelings and tell him about how much I've missed him, Dick, Tim, and Jason. Even Bruce.

He tells me about how the vigilante side of his life has been going, and how he's doing in school, and I tell him all about my new team and one of the cases that we were on that he would have liked to have solved.

I explain the state of mine and Bruce's relationship, and how we had been fracturing for a while. How we had talked since I left, since he told me to leave. How we decided that a little bit of time apart might do us good, or it might show us that we are happier apart than together. How despite how much we love each other, we have some problems that are going to take more than love to fix.

And when he leaves that sunday night, we are both better off than we have been in months, and we have promises to see each other the next weekend.

When I get back to work on monday i'm greeted with questioning looks, and then i'm saved by a new case.

We brief and we gather our things, and then we go to the plane.

Everyone goes through our game plan for when we touch down, and then there is nothing left to save me from an overdue conversation.

"I um, I guess I owe you guys an explanation" I say, shifting in my seat as everyone gets settled, and someone turns the volume up on the laptop Garcia is patched in on.

"So, I moved to Gotham five years ago. Long story short, I met a guy, his name was Bruce, and he was… he was interesting, to say the least. He wasn't sweet, he wasn't romantic, he also wasn't mean, or uh, un-romantic I guess. He was really good at always having a mask on, and not letting anyone know what his weaknesses were, but I happened to have met three of them before I met him. His kids. It was a long drawn out battle, to see who was going to drop their mask first. He lost."

"We went from friends to dating, and somehow three years passed, and I fell in love with his kids, and his dog, and _him. _He proposed, even though we had been struggling, despite loving each other, we had issues. We had separate issues, and issues with each other, and at some point, it all just, collided. We ended up in this huge fight, we were yelling at each other, and then I was screaming at him, then he shut down and told me to leave."

"I could blame me leaving on him, because he _did_ tell me to leave, but Damian was right, i'm a profiler, and I knew, long before we ever went on a date, that if he thought I was going to hurt him, he would lash out and hurt me first. I left because I was angry, and because I knew it would be _so hard _to come back from the things that we said to each other. This job was actually part of our fight, both of our jobs were. I came here, and I left them there. And it _sucks _because I knew that I hurt them when I left, because I wasn't just leaving him, I was leaving all of them. I told myself, and them, that I wouldn't just leave, that I wouldn't walk out of their lives."

"It took, _so long, _for Damian to even like me, let alone trust me, or love me, and it killed me to walk away from him, and I told myself that I would still see him, he would still be mine to love, _they _would still be mine to love. I haven't done the best job with that. Four years is a long time, it's definitely long enough to love Bruce's kids like my own. So I don't know if me and him will ever be _me and him _again. But I was lying to you about the existence of my family. So yeah, I basically adopted four kids, their dog, and i'm in love with probably the most complicated man i've ever met. I'm sorry that my issues blew up in your faces last week though, that never should have happened." I finish, letting out a sigh of relief, happy that that particular secret is finally out in the open.

"Damn girl, is he hot at least?" Garcia asks, breaking the tension and making everyone laugh.

"Affirmative" I answer, chuckling.

"Well, the only thing I wanna know is if we can meet these kids?" JJ asks, making me grin.

"Damian is actually the only one who still qualifies as a kid, but they would love to meet you all. And Garcia, Tim asked me to tell you that Trollfighter136 says hi. Whatever that means" I tell her.

"Oh my god! That's the gamer tag for one of the people I play online games with! He's also one of the best hackers in the world" Garcia says, making me laugh.

"Yeah, Tim's excited to meet you in real life too" I tell her, knowing all about Tim's hacking life.

"Okay, now where are we going? I have to admit that I wasn't paying much attention at the briefing" I ask, smiling sheepishly when JJ mock glares at me, causing Spencer to grin at me from across the table.

"Bludhaven PD, we were asked in by officer Dick Grayson" Hotch says, making my eyes widen.

"Well, I guess you'll be meeting one of them a lot sooner than we thought" I comment, laughing at the looks on their faces.

"What?" Reid asks.

"Officer Dick Grayson" I say, laughing as they all start to talk at once, easily falling into the easy banter that we usually partake in.

**AN Thoughts? Good? Bad? Meh? Lemme know what you think. :) **


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